Because everyone likes pictures.

After-Before Friday Week 15

Highlighting the creative magic behind post-processed photos

6 galleries from 6 photographers this week. Many thanks to all. We’d love to have you join us. No need to write a post if you don’t want to – you can simply submit a before and after photo. It would be fun just to see the transformation! Guidelines are on the After-Before Friday Forum page.

My submission: This week, I am trying something new – a slide show of my post-processing choices to help those who can’t access the videos because of internet issues. I’ve captioned the images with a description of my adjustments made in Lightroom 5 (and a quick visit to Photoshop). I’d be interested to know whether you like this format better.

The photo I’m showcasing this week is one I took a year ago at the Inn at Little Washington, in Washington, Virginia. It was an overcast afternoon following a rainstorm when I shot this photo of the beautiful garden where afternoon tea is traditionally served. (This day, tea — or in our case, champagne! — was served indoors.) I wanted the focal point of the image to be the red bench, which helped to guide my post-processing.

Robin says: My submission to Stacy Fischer’s After-Before Friday Forum was taken at Bodie State Historical Park in California. Bodie is a kind of preserved ghost town and, thanks to the leader of a photo workshop, our group of about ten photographers had the town to ourselves. The final image is actually two images merged in Photoshop. The color in the sky to the right was too good to crop out and I also wanted a little more of the building’s left side. The Before image here is one of the two original RAW files as it was downloaded. Almost all of the changes were made in Adobe Camera Raw, followed by the Photomerge in Photoshop, then a minor tweak in Photoshop resulting in the After image shown here. More details on the processing and the town of Bodie can be found here on my post. Thanks again to Stacy for keeping this forum running.

Loré says: In the wake of last week’s failed experiment, I decided to put a little bit more effort to this week’s entry. It took me few hours playing with Gimp and I must admit it was a test of my patience replacing all that area around the boat. First I cropped the image, which gave me a good starting point. The biggest things was to replace the docking area with the sea. I don’t know if it is easier in some other program, but it was a long process, especially when I came close to the boat. When I finished the image, I still didn’t quite like it, because it was too grainy. So, I softened the image a little bit, lost some details, but camouflaged all the grainy area, especially the sails.

Manal says: This was taken at Blue Hour, at the River Thames. I actually took this photograph as part of a set of time-lapse footage, that proved to be unusable. However it did mean that I had a lot of choices to choose from. I edited the photograph using Adobe Camera Raw. My aim was not to heavily edit the photograph but just make sure that the colours popped and that the image was sharp.

Jaime says: This week, just practicing with layer mask. The photo is of a rural traditional family from a Venezuelan Andina little town called “Los Nevados.”

My inclusion of this second gallery of my photos is a workaround for the WordPress mobile Reader, which I discovered last week does not post my chosen featured image but seemingly the last image in the last gallery of the post. I don’t want to take credit for anyone else’s work, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this will work.

Before, Inn at Little Washington Garden

After, Inn at Little Washington Garden. Exported from Lightroom as final jpeg.

Please click on the links of those who contributed this week, to read about their post-processing steps and/or to see what other treasures they have on their blogs. They’d love to have you visit!

So what do you think of the ABFriday forum?

Feel free to leave your thoughts and suggestions in the comment section. And don’t forget to view the guidelines if you want to participate. I’d love to have you onboard!

Could be because I haven’t posted anything since last week 😉 Up to my ears in back-to-school publishing responsibilities and terribly behind on WordPress. Arrrghh… thanks for your comments, though! Made me smile 😀

An interesting change from video to gallery. It works equally well, the steps are clear and easy to follow. The after image works well, with all those subdued background tones making that red bench pop up even more.

I think you did a great job with the leaves of the tree on the foreground Stacy, but I love the light of the Before version. The Final version presents a totally different atmosphere, and I’m not very sure this like me more than the original one!

Hi, Jaime! I think you’re correct in that by reducing the vibrance and cropping out most of the white table, the after photo is much darker. If I did it again, I would try not reducing the vibrance or exosure so much, to keep a bit more of the surrounding color and light. Good eye, as always 🙂

To be honest, I think I like just having the Before and After. Too many in-betweens are a bit confusing if I can’t work out what the intermediate step is. However, I do like what you’ve done to your picture this week. It really brings the red bench out. In the Before picture, there are too many other things to distract. Again, highlighting how composition can change an ordinary picture into a good one.

Thanks for being honest! I will likely try the gallery again this week but perhaps do fewer steps and try to “show” the changes better. Perhaps I’ll alternate weeks between videos and the gallery, just to keep things interesting 🙂 And thanks for your feedback on the picture. I just loved that red bench and couldn’t help myself from playing around with the photo!

Another great set of ABFriday posts. Looking forward to sending you something again in the future. Like the use of a gallery to show the steps. I kept trying to like Robin’s comment but it wouldn’t stick. I too was intrigued by the fall color look of the tree.

Thanks, Karen, and for your feedback on the gallery. As for why your “like” of Robin’s comment didn’t stick, I found that that happens to me as well if I’m using the mobile app to comment/like. Frustrating…

Another interesting group, Stacy. I liked the use of the gallery to show your steps. I must say, I was initially faked out when I saw Step 5; For a minute, I thought the mask was an attempt to transform the color of the leaves to fall colors. In looking back at my final image, I think it could have used one more action–to lighten the side of the building. Anyway, another learning experience looking at the various approaches taken by all of the contributors.

Ha, got you, Robin! Thanks for your thoughts on the gallery. As for lightening the side of the building in your image, there are beautiful highlights that are captured there. Not sure lightening wouldn’t detract from those. I guess applying a light touch to see how it looked would be a good experiment – apparently my final image was too dark as well (gotta love Jaime!). I think he is right, as I now look at it through fresh eyes. Always interesting to reevaluate.